Thank you very, very much for your help
and for your prayers this past month. We cannot fully express how
deeply grateful we are for your helping to keep our radio mission alive.

By the time you receive this, we will
be seeing our first green leaves of the season, which typically come to
life in the second and third week of June. Those plants ¾ as do the remote people of our region ¾ need to work fast, as the first winter
frost is almost certain to come in mid-August.

As you’ll see, there is much news, and
a lot of work and positive improvements ahead for this outpost radio
station upon which so many rely.

May God greatly bless you for your
kindness to the far-flung villagers whom we serve!

CRYSTAL CLEAR:
(left) In the center, general manager Ric Schmidt holds KNOM’s
Crystal Award for Excellence in Local Achievement from the National
Association of Broadcasters. At left, NAB president/CEO Eddie
Fritts and right, NAB radio board chair Bruce Reese look on.

Before
an audience of a thousand, Ric accepted KNOM’s honor in Las
Vegas. He noted KNOM’s many contributors. “We stand on many
shoulders,” he said.

This is
the fourth time that KNOM has received this high
accolade. And we are in heady company. Among the other nine
stations receiving Crystals this year were KOIT-FM San Francisco,
KBBX-FM Omaha, WTMX-FM Chicago, KLOS-FM Los Angeles and WTOP-AM
Washington, DC.

The
greatest honor, of course, is the appreciation of our western Alaska
audience, and the loyalty and kindness of good people like you.
Thank you!

Please consider adding missions like
KNOM to your will. We prayerfully place all bequests into funds
that will be used only for major improvements or for emergencies.
Thank you!

INSPIRATIONAL
SPOT: Hope is putting Faith
to work when doubting would be easier.

BREAKING UP IS HARD TO DO:
(left) On a May afternoon, KNOM volunteer Liz Recchia checks out
the Bering Sea, frozen now for six months.

From
Chesterton, Indiana, Liz has signed up for a second volunteer year, as
music director. Thanks, Liz!

At
Nome, the ice often breaks up by late May, although it has been known
to stick around until the end of June.

This
year, the shore ice broke off to sea relatively early on May 18th.

GAS PAINS: No one is saying for sure, but
word has it that gasoline on the June spring barge might retail for
$4.06 a gallon, and fuel oil won’t be much less.

CRASH: We doubt that our listeners could
tell, but we suffered a debilitating failure of our studio computers
recently. Behind the scenes, Ric Schmidt worked two days and
nights without sleep to keep things going.

It was a tough month. At the age of eight, our newsroom
Associated Press computer gave up the ghost. And the volunteer
house refrigerator quit working.

Repairs and replacements cost around $5,000. Ouch!

A FRIEND WITH AN EMMY: Alaska broadcast
pioneer Augie Hiebert will receive a lifetime achievement Emmy Award in
Seattle on June 25th. Among Augie’s achievements was
the ground work for KNOM’s first application to the FCC in 1968.
Congratulations, cherished friend!

“GLOP”: That’s the sound every footstep
makes in Nome when the snow melts and the dirt streets turn to
mud. At night it freezes, but during the day, our deep, deep
potholes are filled with goop the consistency of pudding. “Enjoy
it while you can,” the old timers say, as next month, the air will be
filled with gritty, silty dust.

KNOM is the oldest Catholic station in
the Unites States, continuing to work hard ¾ thanks to you.

INSPIRATIONAL SPOT:Does someone in your
life aggravate you? Does one of their habits frequently irritate
you? Has a friend recently put you down? Does someone you
know wish you harm?

Jesus said an amazing
thing: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.

MEASURING UP: (left) Financial
officer and maintenance engineer Tom Busch checks the AM transmitter
building, to see how it can be rearranged to fit a 50,000 Watt
transmitter.

Tom was
in Nome on his first trip from Anchorage after stepping down as KNOM’s
general manager.

KNOM is
applying for 50,000 Watts, to double the station’s daytime power.

Consulting
engineer Jack Mullaney expects that the FCC will grant a construction
permit in August. We expect delivery of the new transmitter in
October.

While a
new transmitter is a large capital expense, it will lower future
operating costs.

That’s
because a stronger signal should allow us to feed several of our
village translators with AM receivers, rather than with satellite
circuits, which are expensive.

The
equipment rack next to Tom will be moved about four inches to the
right, and the center ones moved elsewhere in the building to
accommodate the new transmitter.

This
project is made possible by major gifts given by wills to the mission
over the past ten years. We keep in mind the great trust which
these wonderful benefactors bestowed on us.

May
17th, Tom also installed a 1,000-Watt transmitter for KNOM’s FM
station, increasing power from the tiny 88 Watts it had been since
1993. We’ll have a photo next month.

TRAGEDY: Public affairs director Amy
Flaherty was preparing a call-in program on the subject of search and
rescue. Listeners had requested we discuss the topic, due to a
large number of search missions this year.

A day
before the show, tragedy struck the village of Gambell. (197
miles from Nome, and only 35 from the Russian mainland, Gambell is in
the heart of KNOM listening country.)

Early
that morning, a boat was swamped by 8-foot seas during a whale
hunt. A 20-year-old man died, and three villagers were lost at
sea, the village’s mayor and two 11-year-old children.

“Villagers
encouraged us to run the program as scheduled,” Amy says, “and people
exchanged a lot of useful information. Everyone offered sympathy
and prayers for the village of Gambell.”

Did you know there's a photo index
for every Nome Static picture since May 1997? You'll find
it here, and
we hope you enjoy browsing through our archive of hundreds of images.

INSPIRATIONAL
SPOT:We
go through life collecting bricks and steel bars of sin, hurt and
doubt. This world tells us that we’re free to collect these
things, so long as we’re not hurting anyone.

But the reality is
that these bricks and bars add up. They build a prison cell
around our soul, keeping us from others, keeping us from God.

We can see great
beauty beyond those walls with a surrender to the Peace of Christ.

ON
THE SPOT: (left)
Using a computer in Studio B, KNOM program director Kelly Brabec
reviews an upcoming KNOM inspirational spot. Its audio is
represented by the squiggly line on the left-hand monitor.

Voiced
by Bishop Donald Kettler, the spot reads: “In our journey to
heaven, going out of our way to help someone else is not considered a
detour. It may be the main road.”

THIRTY YEARS AGO: In June 1975, KNOM volunteer nurses
Colleen Marilley, Romey De Furia and Pat Wygant won first place in
Nome’s Midnight Sun parade
for “most original” float. (Four nurses in operating gowns
carried a “patient,” Pat, down the street on a stretcher, with overhead
I.V. bottle and all.)

At that
time, about 80% of KNOM’s operating expenses were met by the donated
salaries of nurses who lived as volunteers and donated their entire
salaries to the mission.

Today,
nearly 100% of our needs are met by the individual gifts of people like
you.

ANSWERING A PAGE: May and June have been
considerably busier than we expected, and the new KNOM book, just about
finished, is remaining on the shelf, unpublished, for a bit longer than
we thought. We hope to have news next month. Please stay
tuned!

IT’S FIXED! May 10th and 11th,
a crew finally made it to Nome and repaired the cable that had snapped
high on our AM tower in March. What a relief! Thank you to
everyone who sent an extra gift to help with the expense. We have
not received the bill yet, but expect that it will be approximately
$10,000.

We
cannot thank you enough for your prayers and your financial support for
our work, as we provide quality, entertaining, inspirational and
educational programming to serve families for hundreds and hundreds of
miles throughout remote western Alaska.